Liver Disease Treatment and Diagnostic Options in London

All liver disease treatment options depend on the individual patient’s problem, and with the London Liver Centre’s use of the latest technological advances, the patient’s quality of life can be greatly improved. Some of these treatments are listed below:

CT (Computerised Tomography) scan – used to further clarify liver tumours and damage. This scan builds up a series of x-rays which convert to a three dimensional picture. This scan is painless and takes about thirty minutes. It can show where a tumour originated from and whether or not it has spread

Liver Biopsy – used to determine the degree of cirrhosis within the liver

Liver Ultrasound – performed in our Imaging Department under the care of our specialist liver Radiologists the patient will be asked to fast (clear fluids are allowed) for six hours beforehand. A gel is then spread over the abdomen and a “microphone-like” instrument is rubbed over converting the sound waves produced into a computer scanned image. Completely painless, the process takes about twenty minutes

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan - this type of scan uses magnetism and not x-rays to build up a series of cross-sectional pictures of the inside of the body. During the scan the patient is asked to lie motionless inside a metal cylinder. The test can take up to one hour

MRI Tesla scan - this scan uses a contrast dye which will show up liver tumours very clearly and is used to differentiate between different types of tumours or if a patient’s liver texture makes a CT scan unclear

RFA (radio frequency ablation) – a comparatively new technique using heat to destroy liver tumours in a non invasive way- passing a low electrical current through the tumour tissue, heat is generated that causes the tumour cells to die

TACE (trans-arterial chemoembolisation) - this delivers chemotherapy directly into the area of the liver which contains the cancer and is then followed by an injection of a substance to block the smaller blood vessels feeding the tumour (embolisation)

Although most effective treatment for liver cancer may always be surgery, sometimes this is just not possible because of the size or position of the tumour. It may not be possible to operate if the cancer has spread beyond the liver, or if the liver is badly damaged by cirrhosis. However, with the liver’s amazing ability to regenerate itself, a liver resection (which is where surgery removes the damaged portion of the liver) is able to re-grow very quickly and reverts back to near enough its normal size within just a few weeks.